Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Much has happened in the time I was in the hospital, most especially here on the Thrakin homeworld. It has been freed. Zayne’s ownership of the deed to his lands, along with all the intergalactic publicity that came with the revelations of my survival has brought intense diplomatic pressure on those who occupied these lands. As a consequence, they have been returned to the native Thrakins who have dwelled here since they evolved here. I can see abandoned mining structures, great machines that no longer pound the rocks of this world into mineral dust for far-off businesses. There is a peace to this wild place. It feels as though the entire planet is slowly exhaling after having held its breath in pain for so many years.
“This is what you bled for. This is what you were broken to save,” Zayne says to me. “I am so sorry.”
He has not stopped apologizing for what he considers to be his failure, but I know all too well that if I had not been hurt so badly and so publicly we would never have gained the publicity to free his people. The freeing of the Thrakin required a blood sacrifice, and the blood happened to be mine.
“Stop saying sorry,” I say. “This was worth it. Every bit of it.”
“You are absolutely amazing,” Zayne says, embracing me tenderly. There is much to be done. There is a world to explore, and a family to meet. This is the beginning of the happily ever after.
“So. Are we meeting your folks, or…”
“Later,” he says. “I have wanted to do this since I met you. My first thoughts of you were having you in this place, making you my own on these lands.”
A tingle of excitement sparks inside me. He is looking at me with such possessive desire, and on this world, his shimmering scales take on a new iridescence. This is where he was made to be. This is where he is at his most powerful. The deeds he took from Simon do not only free these lands. They make him master of them, and he has never looked so incredibly masterful as he does now, the blue of his scales turned steel by the vapors of the environment.
Zayne scoops me up and carries me over rough, ashen ground to what he calls a den. It is the entrance of a cave that runs back into one of the many tectonic mountains of this world. In the shimmering dark of that sacred space, he lays me down on soft furs and spreads my thighs and feasts on me, his tongue hot and wet between my thighs until I spiral into pleasure and beg for something harder and longer, thicker and stronger.
I get what I want, because for once I am not in trouble. For once, I have been a very good girl, and for once I am being rewarded for my deeds with pure pleasure absent of any punishment at all.
We make passionate, intense, romantic love in the glimmer of the dark, the walls of the cave shining with the fluorescent glow of the alien rock. I spread for him and am filled with long, languid strokes. We have all the time in the world now, he and I. There are no more concerts, no more contracts. There is nothing but Zayne and me, my alien master and I.
EPILOGUE
Lyric
“So you live on a fiery doom planet, is that right?”
“That’s right, Jessie. I’m lucky enough to live on one of the few inhabitable death class planets in the galaxy.”
Anchor Jessie is sitting across from me, broad smile and bright eyes, and a complete lack of sincerity of any kind, a sort of psychotic friendliness that fails to even be a rough approximation of the real thing. I can hardly believe I used to get angry at the things this woman said to and about me. It’s like having lost my temper at a doll with a pull string.
“It’s so nice to have you here,” she says, making a faint gesture to the studio in which the two of us are sitting. “I almost feel like we know each other after the way I covered your concerts.”
“Yes. I, too, feel an incredible kinship,” I deadpan.
“Of course, you’re so much more than a starlet now,” she says. “You’re a full-blown diva.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Sure you are. Saving worlds…”
“I didn’t save a world. I got my ass handed to me by an abusive manager, and people saw that and wanted to help.”
“Some would say that’s how you save a world.”
“Sure. Some would say that.” Some would say absolutely anything to get an interview too. I’m here because every time I make an appearance, I get paid enough to keep an entire Thrakin village fed, clothed, and educated for a year. I may not be a starlet anymore, but I have to work.